If you’re attending a business show, organising a seminar or if you have been asked to give a presentation at someone else’s event, this is a great opportunity to maximise your event marketing activities.
Here’s how:
Before the event
- Use social media to promote your attendance at the forthcoming event, linking and tagging the event organisers, who in turn will likely share your posts with other attendees or their own connections.
- Invite your clients and business contacts to the event and highlight why they should attend.
- Confirm what freebies and offers you will be making during the event and have these ready for the big day.
During the event
- Use social media to promote your presence on the day, tagging the event organisers and other businesses you know who are attending to broaden the reach of your posts.
- If giving presentations, provide practical tips on what delegates can do. Don’t be afraid of giving some free advice, it demonstrates your expertise and is more likely to result in people coming to ask you for help (which ultimately you can charge for). Read our blog on ‘Why giving presentations can win you business‘ for some more tips.
- Go and talk to people – don’t wait for them to come and talk to you.
- Make the most of your free offers, gather people’s contact details (and their GDPR marketing consent!) to send them something after the event, e.g. a copy of your slides or a newsletter etc.
- Take photos from the day and post on social media to trigger any ‘in the moment’ discussions.
- Let people know what social media platforms you are on and encourage them to connect with you. This helps to develop the contact and the relationship after the event.
After the event
- Respond to people’s information or newsletter requests, ideally within 24 hours of the event.
- Where you had specific conversations with people during the event, arrange to meet up or have a phone call to progress these discussions.
- Send invitations via social media (LinkedIn is best) to people you have met during the event. Add a personalised message to remind them of who you are and what you discussed. The aim is to keep that conversation going.
- Accept social media invitations you receive from other people.
- Add any photos you have taken to your news pages on the website and into your newsletters, with a summary of the event and what you did.
Finally, hold a debriefing session with anyone who was involved in the event. Is there anything else that could be done to raise your profile before, during and after the event? How many enquiries were generated, requests for further information received, follow up meetings organised etc.? Would you do the event again, if so would you do anything differently? Then start to plan for the next event(s) you have in your diary.
If you will be attending an event in the future and would like to discuss how to maximise your event marketing, contact me at vicki@momentumforprofessionals.co.uk or call me on 01822 833300.
